The field of the present invention relates to a device for carrying objects, more particularly to a bottle carrier which supports and carries one or more containers in a desired arrangement.
Various bottle carriers designed to support a plurality of bottles by their necks have been proposed. Some of these carriers, such as those shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,139,094 or U.S. Pat. No. 2,823,063, include an upper tray portion with openings of a design to accept the neck of a bottle. The strength of the structure and its ability to hold each bottle is essentially dependent solely upon the stiffness and strength of the opening which grasps the bottle neck. Typically, it is difficult to insert a bottle neck into the opening and once inserted and then removed, the edges of the opening are damaged and become unusable. These units, however, are most aptly designed for smaller bottles and are frequently in a six-pack type of configuration where removal is accomplished by ripping the bottle away from the carrier.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,235,468 or U.S. Pat. No. 3,633,962, each of the bottle necks are contained or held within an individual frame member interconnected with the other individual frames by a stiff connecting structure. Again the strength of the carrier connection to a respective bottle neck is dependent solely upon the connection stiffness strength of the individual frame member. Because of the required stiffness of the frame member, it is difficult to install the frame member on a bottle neck and even more difficult to effect removal. In addition, in order to provide sufficient connection strength, the devices are necessarily complex and relatively massive. Such complexities increase construction costs and relative massive size increases material costs of manufacture.
As such, it is desirable to have a device for carrying multiple containers which is of simple design and low cost which avoids the limitations of the prior devices.